MONTEGO BAY, St James — Having recognised the need for additional social intervention programmes in the volatile parish of St James, Member of Parliament Caretaker Dr Andre Haughton (People’s National Party, St James West Central) has collaborated with the Valley Foundation to engage residents through a community futsal league.

Haughton says this futsal league, which is generally played on a hard court smaller than a football field, will be hosted in five communities across St James through their SAFE Jamaica Programme.

“What we have realised is that there has been a lot of crime and violence across Jamaica, but more so in the western region and St James has recorded the highest number of murders [since] the start of the year,” Haughton told the Jamaica Observer.

SAFE Jamaica, he explained, will see residents participating in multiple activities and social intervention measures such sports, arts, financial literacy and economics or enterprise education.

This futsal league is the first leg of their programmes and is said to have been successfully launched in the community of Mount Salem.

“We held the first one in Mount Salem and it was very successful,” Haughton said. “For the two and a half months that the league was held in Mount Salem, there were no violent crimes recorded during that period, so it was very successful in terms of bringing people from different parts of the community together to play futsal in unity.”

Haughton said that 14 teams from Mount Salem and surrounding communities participated in this friendly competition. In the end, Active Strika were named the champions and Mandingo took second place.

The second community to benefit from this sporting initiative is the crime-plagued Granville. Haughton said that this competition, which started last Sunday, will also run for 10 weeks.

Their ultimate goal is to host a parish futsal competition to bring residents together.

“We currently have 13 teams for Granville’s league and what we are going to do is that when we go through all the communities, the top two teams from the communities will play the St James Futsal Championship. The top two teams from Mount Salem have already qualified and now we are seeking the top teams from other communities across the parish,” he told the Observer.

The decision to utilise sporting activities as a social intervention tool came from his own personal experience and calls from community members who are seeking an avenue to express themselves, Haughton said.

“I am a product of an inner-city community,” he said. “When I was growing up, sports was very instrumental in maintaining peace and giving us the skills we needed for conflict resolution and interpersonal relationships to communicate effectively with people. We understand that and that is why we have sought to engage the people from this angle.

“As a matter of fact, they are the ones who are always calling for sporting events, so we are just satisfying the demand. After Granville, we want to go to Catherine Hall or Flanker, so whoever we can team up with, and where the facilities are available for us to play the game, then we will go there.”

On top of promoting unity in communities through futsal, Haughton says that opportunities are also being created for players wanting to pursue a career in sports.

“Futsal is an internationally played game and those playing from these communities are very good, so they will have a chance to make the St James team or the Jamaica team and hopefully compete in the [FIFA] Futsal World Cup. What we are doing is providing an additional avenue to expose a lot of our young players,” he said.

“Four players from the Mount Salem league were scouted to play for Montego Bay United and they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten that exposure if it was not for the league.”